Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Information Overload

Let's start by acknowledging that no matter what we feel should be the outcome of the Sandy Hook horror, our opinions originate in what we each believe is the best interest of our citizens. Regardless of what the talking heads are saying...*I* have certainly not been desensitized. I have had an ache in my chest since the news began to unfold. I am mourning for each of those families and am just as confused and outraged as the rest of the country that nightmares like this ever happen.

I just don't know if my brain can take another second of the guns vs. no guns debate. I have come to believe the outcome depends on whether you are thinking with your head or your heart. After the horrific events in Connecticut, it's a normal reaction to say, "No more guns!" I get it. I've been there. You just want a quick band-aid. A stiff drink. Something to make you think it will never happen again. I hear you. Seeing the faces of the children and hearing the stories of the heartbroken parents is more than most of us can bear.

I have a saying that my kids are sick of hearing...my own personal "mom mantra" --"Unfortunately the easy way is not usually the right way." It applies to most things. Most times the "right thing" is the tougher road, the more effort, the uncomfortable choice. Speaking up if someone is gossiping about a mutual friend, resisting peer pressure, giving back the extra $20 the cashier gave you by mistake, etc.

I am not among the stalwart gun defenders here. I don't own a gun and, if the truth be told, I am a bit scared of guns. I won't lie...my heart often says, "No more guns!" But, my head knows this is not the right answer. It won't fix anything. It's the easy answer and the right road is a long, uncomfortable one where we have to examine mental illness, divorce, government intervention, labeling, mainstreaming, valuing life and personal responsibility.

Americans don't like to talk about anything that might cause them guilt. They'd rather point the finger at an inanimate object and carry on exactly what they were doing before this happened. So, we'll probably pass some assault weapon laws and this will happen again and we'll be right back where we started...

Right on. People who knee jerk to gun control are like the same people that knee jerked to Jim Crow.

"I know not all gun owners are bad, but these weapons in the wrong hands could be dangerous so we need to pass some common sense laws because we've had serious problems in the past"

sounds just like

"I know not all blacks are bad people, but some blacks are dangerous, especially towards white women, and we need to pass some common sense laws that keep them out of our neighborhoods because we've had some serious problems in the past."

Its reactionary, knee jerk thinking based on ignorance and fear. Its the same exact mindset.

We have a proud tradition of pet ownership in this country. However, dogs are 99.9% genetically identical to Grey Wolves. Its not surprising then that this year 4.5 million Americans will be viciously attacked by these wolf-style assault animals. And sadly, of that number 30-35 will be killed, most of them children or the elderly. That is why it is time to have a real conversation about wolf-style style assault animals. We're not here to take your hamster, your cat, your gerbil. But why would anyone need a wolf style assault animal, or worse a "high capacity" dog like a Doberman or Pittbull? Americans have no need for an animal that can take down a moose. They should be in the hands of Soldiers or Police Officers, not private citizens. That;s why you should join me to fight back against groups like the ASPCA and Humane Society to end private dog ownership and prevent these millions of senseless, tragic attacks. Remember, its for the children.

"For example, the city of Santa Monica in California has restricted pit bulls, and Walkerton, Indiana has banned Rottweilers. Other places such as Westfield, Illinois and Jacksonville, Lonoke, North Little Rock and Beebe Arkansas have banned Dobermans. These types of restrictive laws are called Breed Specific Legislation." via Legal Match

Also the Grey Wolf argument is false since no healthy grey or red Wolf has ever killed an American. Is it because the fear was false or we got rid of 99% of wolves before they attacked?

The argument is not about 100% guns or 0% guns, but it does not surprise me that you spin it to think it is an all or nothing argument.

There is no point in making criminals out of perfectly law abiding citizens who have never harmed a soul. When people want to kill, they will find a way. It's up to us to stop them. The government can't. We have to do it. We can't be lazy.

The argument is that semiautomatic guns are capable of mass damage and thus making the ones most capable of inflicting mass casualties illegal is quite logical. This isn't driven by some touchy-feel argument, but by the cold realization that people's desire to own destructive machines should be overridden by the right of children not to gunned down like this en masse.

Ridiculous argument. I'll ask you again, Nate. When has prohibition of anything worked? All you do is make criminals out of people who have never harmed a soul and create black markets which drive crime. There is no law and no ban which will make guns magically disappear from the world. You are responding emotionally, not logically.

Do you think this guy cared that he was breaking a law by taking firearms from his mother without permission, and/or carrying those firearms into a "gun free zone"? If he didn't care about breaking those laws, why would he (or any criminal) care about breaking a law by owning a high-capacity assault rifle in the 1st place?

That's the thing I don't understand about the peacenicks. Do you really think an assault weapons ban will make everyone who already owns an assault rifle turn it in? No, it'd just prevent more people from buying them.

Lastly, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the death toll in Newtown, CT would be less today if I had been there with my Sig Sauer .45 and it's whopping 7-round capacity.

Step 1: Find individuals that own their own guns willing to work without pay during normal work hours.Step 2: Background checks for all individuals involved. Who pays for these?Step 3: Check all individuals for gun licensing and sufficient training. Who pays for this?Step 4: Organize individuals to maintain consistent structure during all school hours.

Where the hell did the "without pay" part come in? What kind of stupid-ass question is that? Has the conversation now turned from banning assault rifles to the cost of security guards? Nate - put the vodka bottle down and pay attention.

All I'm saying is this:

Step 1 - Allow me to carry a loaded firearm everywhere I go. If I happen to be carrying that loaded firearm in a place where some nutjob wants to commit mass murder I will shoot the fuck out of that person.

Step 3 - People can get their own training if they want. Thanks to my time in the Infantry, if you're not trained and you come at me I'm going to shoot the fuck out of you.

Step 4 - Open your mind. Just because the most recent place this happened was in a school doesn't mean schools are the only places that need to be more secure (ex - Clackamas Town Center, which is about 10 miles from where I'm sitting right now). And this is EXACTLY why my solution is to allow society as a whole to carry a weapon if they so choose. We're living in a society where we all need to be our own security guards.

Parts that worked, parts that did not, and one that might have. There are many parts to this story. I have thought about some.

1. The system worked. The scum tried to buy a rifle and was refused. Don’t know the details yet, but he was refused. That part worked. He stole the weapons.

2. The school had about the best security you could expect. Locked entry and identity only admission. Lockdown and notification procedures. That part did not work. The scum shot his way in.

3. Connecticut has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. Still, the scum got weapons. That part did not work. Law breakers do not, by definition, follow the law.

4. The only options permitted to the teachers and children were to run, hide, hope the bad guy does not find them. That part did not work. He did, they died. By law.

5. The media reported lots of false material. The scum’s mother never worked at the school. It is said the scum has Asperger’s syndrome. We actually do not know that. He was weird, socially awkward, and a geek. That part did not work. Yet mental illness is now a permanent facet of the story.

6. Nobody stood guard, in an effective manner, over these children. Heroic staff tried, but were gunned down in their brave but futile attempts. That part did not work. They died because they had, by law, no useful means to defeat the scum.

7. Had just one person had and used a gun, the scum would have been stopped the way 99.9% of these guys are stopped – with a gun. With a gun used by others or themselves, it is weaponry up to the task that stops them. Nobody had a gun, except the scum. That part did not work. By law.

The anti-gun people proclaim that the way to prevent this from happening again is to disarm further those who might have killed the killer. To them, the answer is to, by law, let the children die.

As to the semi-automatic argument (because what everyone else said is what I agree with....)....

Nate, have you ever tried to defend yourself with a single shot gun that you had to reload yourself? Have you ever went to a range and tried to time yourself while doing that? Not terribly useful for self defense where, oftentimes, speed is more important than accuracy (hence magazines with multiple rounds). It evens out the playing field for those of us who haven't been in the military and don't regularly have access to training involving stress tests with a weapon. Which is the point of the 2nd Amendment - self defense from all intruders, including the gov't.

I've used your last phrase hundreds of times - "don't bring a knife to a firefight" is the way I've chosen to say it. Unfortunately the principal in Newtown, CT didn't even have a knife... Tragic, indeed.

Nate defends himself by quickly presenting his ass to a potential threat and then begs for ass rape. You are ten times the man he is. Nate enjoys victim status. Hed likely apologize for his attackers and insist we pay them more welfare

Of course it never dawns on Nate that people... might do something... for free!

Do you have any idea how many combat veterans we now have walking the street?! All of whom are used to having to get into gunfights with people in places crowded with civilians? 26% of them are unemployed. I just figured out how to employ 100% of them. Most of them even have their own guns.

It has recently come to light that this kid's mother, knowing he had more than a couple of screws loose, actually took the kid down to the local shooting range and had him trained in firearm use! I had wondered how this kid was able to inflict so much damage in such a short amount of time....most kids, without training, wouldn't know if the safety was on or off...if they could find the safety. Good thing the mother was killed first because if she was still alive I think the locals would drag her through the streets like they did Mussolini.

Some kid tweeted yesterday that he was gonna go to my son's high school today and "shoot it up". Needless to say, I think half of New Bern's police department was on campus today - armed, of course. Nothing happened. Thank God.

120,000 deaths by gun both intentional and unintentional for the same time period.

Also when was the last time 20 kids drowned in one pool at once.

The government can't protect you and it never will. ~Another false statement, every soldier, police officer, coast guard, and many more are proof you are wrong.

Passing legislation will only give you a false sense of security.~It is the same sense of security that owning a gun gives you, seeing how people who own guns have been robbed, raped, and killed. True in lower numbers but it still happens.

The more gun owners and armed security the less likely that mass shootings or any other violence will happen.

But at the same time the number of incidents involving including death, injuries, and accidents will increase.

Having a gun doesn't make you a hero but it does make you a potential killer.

The real question is who do you trust/fear more a random nutjob or your friendly neighbor with a gun. (Hint I trust neither.)

I love survivalist blogs and recently an Alaska frontier family posted that the father/husband died accidentally. It took a few days of internet searching to find out that he was shot by his own son by "accident" although the investigation was not finished.

You weaseled around that. It's even worse for accidental poisonings. BAN CLOROX!!!

Poisoning is already against the law. Also you keep "weaseling" by mixing gun violence in total with accidents. I already stated in the world of accidents gun deaths are lowest among all age groups.

...you can whip out your iphone and call the coast guard. First I have a Blackberry, second in my 30+ years of life I never been threatened with a knife or gun, and third most of my family are Coast Guard members and damn straight I will call them.

I do not live in constant fear of knife wielding psychos, that statement is like people who say "well I can get hit by a bus tomorrow, you never know" Actually you do know and my job is to realistic plan for all events. I'm sorry if you have been stabbed many times before by this alleged psycho.

My home was robbed twice over the last 30+ years and in both cases my owning a gun was useless since I wasn't home. The excellent government employees who investigated after the crime and arrested the perp before he committed more crimes gave me a great sense of security.

An American Israeli woman told her child about what happened in Connecticut. The child asked, "Where was the guard?" She told him that in America we don't have armed guards in many schools. He replied, "Then who keeps the kids safe?" One of the Columbine shooters was a vociforous opponent of concealed carry and especially legislation that would have allowed carry on school grounds. Even wrote lots of letters to state officials about it. So, Nate, if more than one rent a cop had been in Columbine, maybe, just maybe things would have gone differently? You guys just choose to take the path of surrender every friggin time. Pathetic.

second in my 30+ years of life I never been threatened with a knife or gun

Make up your mind. If you don't fear guns in the hands of the psychos and criminals, why do you fear them in the hands of the law-abiding?

and third most of my family are Coast Guard members and damn straight I will call them.

Good luck with that.

I do not live in constant fear of knife wielding psychos, that statement is like people who say "well I can get hit by a bus tomorrow, you never know"

I don't live in fear of them either because we carry in the places where they are most likely to be.

I'm sorry if you have been stabbed many times before by this alleged psycho.

Oh. Well. Let's all make laws around the life of Aisha Taylor. How self-absorbed can you possibly be? My husband was nearly attacked by a knife wielding psycho, but he pulled his gun and the asshole ran away. I'm glad he had one and I don't think your personal experience should dictate whether or not he should be allowed to protect himself or me or other innocents.

My home was robbed twice over the last 30+ years and in both cases my owning a gun was useless since I wasn't home. The excellent government employees who investigated after the crime and arrested the perp before he committed more crimes gave me a great sense of security.

I am sincerely glad you were not home and not injured. That's the best possible outcome. But the truth is, if you had been home, it would not have been the gun that was useless, it would have been the cops. Because as courageous and hard-working as they are, they cannot see the future and anticipate what criminals will do.

In my 35 years on this planet I haven't been attacked either, outside of schoolhouse fights, that I actively participated in. I own a gun, I have also trained and am very proficient in hand-to-hand combat. I could chalk the fact that I haven't been attacked up to the fact that I have those, or I could just say I'm damned lucky. But I will say, that when I am attacked, heaven help that person, because hell is going to be unleashed in a manner that even Hollywood couldn't have predicted. I will ensure that moron counts his/her encounter with me as the worst choice of his/her life.

But no one will ever say that my friends and family were not in a better position for me being ready for whatever came at them.

That's why America, as it stands today, is full of pussies. It's like everyone got castrated over the last 15 years. And the reaction I'm seeing more of, tells me that we're going to be a country of sheeple. At least the French have balls, comparatively.

"My home was robbed twice over the last 30+ years and in both cases my owning a gun was useless since I wasn't home. The excellent government employees who investigated after the crime and arrested the perp before he committed more crimes gave me a great sense of security."

This kinda proves the point that The police are unable to protect you or your property. They did not stop the crime committed against you, and It's only a matter of time before the arrested are released. Odds are they will go right back to being criminals.

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